Featured Artist

Charles Grafly, 1862-1929

Charles Grafly (1862-1929) was a Philadelphia-born sculptor who began his career as a stonecutter at Struther's Stoneyard in 1879. He was later placed with Alexander Milne Calder to help carve the decorative sculpture for Philadelphia's new City Hall in 1881.

He studied at the Philadelphia Fine arts moving on to the Academie Julian which was dominated by the Beaux Arts style characterised by it's concentration on the allegorical, and mythological, and aesthetics based on classical Greek sculpture.

He worked as a teacher of sculpture at the Fine Arts Academy, but his work was primarily public commissions, completing prestigious monuments such as the Pioneer Mother Monument, 1915, in San Francisco and the Memorial to Major General George Gordon Meade, 1927, in Washington, D.C